Reloading 70s

This will make sense only to Indians above 40 and having visited or lived
in INDIA.

1. Though you may not publicly own up to this, at the age of 12-17 years,
you were very proud of your first "Bell bottom" or your first "Maxi"or your
first "Apache" jeans.

2. Phantom & Mandrake were your only true heroes. The brainy ones read
"Competition Success Review". (Absolutely true!)

3. Your "Camlin" geometry box & Natraj/Flora pencil was your prized
possession.

4. The only "Holidays" you took were to go to your grandparents' or your
cousins' houses.

5. Ice-cream meant only - either an orange stick, a vanilla stick – or a
Choco Bar if you were better off than most.

6. You gave your neighbour’s phone number to others with a ‘c/o’ written
against it because you had booked yours only 7 years ago and were still
waiting for your number to come.

7. Your first family car (and the only one) was a Fiat or an Ambassador.
This often had to be pushed by the entire family to get going.

8. The glass windows in the back seats used to get stuck at the two-thirds
down level and used to irk you greatly! The window went down only if your
puny arm could manage the tacky rotary handle to pull it down. Locking the
door was easy. You just whacked the other tacky, non-rotary handle
downwards.

9. Your mom had stitched the weirdest lace curtains for all the windows of
the car. They were tied in the middle and if your dad was the
comfort-oriented kinds, you had a magnificent small fan upfront.

10. Your parents were proud owners of HMT watches. You "earned" yours after
SSC exams.

11. You have been to "Jumbo Circus"; have held your breath while the pretty
young thing in the glittery skirt did acrobatics, quite enjoyed the
elephants hitting football, the motorcyclist vrooming in the "Maut ka Gola"
and it was politically okay to laugh your guts out at dwarfs hitting each
other's bottoms!

12. You at least once heard "Hawa Mahal" on the radio.

13. If you had a TV, it was normal to expect the neighborhood to gather
around to watch the Chitrahaar or the Sunday movie. If you didn't have a
TV, you just went to a house that did. It mattered little if you knew the
owners or not.

14. Sometimes the owners of these TVs got very creative and got a bi or
even a tri-coloured anti-glare screen which they attached with two side
clips onto their Weston TVs. That confused the hell out of you!

15. Black & White TVs weren't so bad after all because cricket was played
in whites.

16. You thought your Dad rocked because you got your own (the family's; not
your own own!) colour TV when the Asian Games started. Everyone else got
the same idea as well and ever since, no one came over to your house and
you didn't go to anyone else's.

17. You dreaded the death of any political leader because of the mourning
they would announce on the TV. After all how much "Shastriya Sangeet" can a
kid take? Salma Sultana also didn't smile during the mourning.

18. You knew that "Indira Gandhi" was somebody really powerful and terribly
important. And that's all you needed to know.

19. The only "Gadgets" in the house were the TV, the Fridge and possibly a
mixer.

20. All the gadgets had to be duly covered with a crochet cover and
sometimes even with ingenious, custom-fit plastic covers.

21. Movies meant Rajesh Khanna or Amitabh Bachchan. Before the start of the
movie you always had to watch the obligatory "Newsreel".

22. You thought you were so rocking because you knew almost all the songs
of Abba and Boney M.

23. Your hormones went crazy when you heard "Disco Deewane" by Naziya
Hassan & Zoheb Hassan.

24. School teachers, your parents and even your neighbours could whack you
and it was all okay.

25. Photograph taking was a big thing. You were lucky if your family owned
a camera. A reel of 36 exposures was valuable hence it justified the half
hour preparation & "setting" & the "posing" for each picture. Therefore,
you have atleast one family picture where everyone is holding their breath
and standing at attention!

26. During Diwali celebaration it was family clothes tailored from our
favourite tailor down the road.

27. We walked to school or took a bus... the ones who got dropped by car
were always RICH ones.

28. Our outdoor games were gully danda, marbles, stick in the mud , langdi,
chupa chupi.

29. Going out to eat in a restaurant was an occasion may be once /twice in
a year.

30. Mostly we managed with one pair of shoes for the whole year at school,
our elder brother/sisters clothes , books were passed to us for school...

31. "Duckback" raincoats were premium what we could get starting the school
in rainy season every year...

Did you hear anyone say, OLD IS GOLD?





*(Yaadein Hari Ho Gayee)*